


Fields of Red

by callowyn



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Embedded Images, Gen, Horror, Inspired by Photography, Purgatory, Season/Series 08, The Wizard of Oz - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-21
Updated: 2012-10-21
Packaged: 2017-11-16 19:15:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/542919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callowyn/pseuds/callowyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Poppies. Poppies will make him sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fields of Red

**Author's Note:**

> This started its life as a tumblrfic [here](http://callowyn.tumblr.com/post/34065218635). Picture credit: [Sabalan](http://500px.com/photo/6525571) by Farshid Alizadeh.

Dean stumbles into the field after a fight with some screeching flying thing that looked kind of like a monkey, so the Wizard of Oz reference pops into his head as soon as he sees the red bursts scattered across the landscape. _Poppies. Poppies will make them sleep._ It was a reference to opium, Sam had explained once, but in Purgatory every metaphor becomes literal, and the light floral scent wafting towards him carries an undertone of poison. Dean can already feel himself getting dizzy, watching the blood-red flowers undulating in the wind of an oncoming storm.

"Shit," he swears, his breath speeding up, but that just fills him with the scent of the flowers faster. He’s got a gun in one hand and a sharp stake in the other; neither will help him here. Dean is a creature of the flesh when it comes down to it, always preferred killing the things that bled when he cut them, whose bodies he could grab and break with his own hands. This subtlety, this innocuous beauty that cloaks its deadliness in a sweet scent, that kind of shit may fascinate Sam but it makes Dean’s skin crawl. Ruby-red looks so inviting but Dean likes his world in black and white, thanks, and now he's really having trouble staying upright.

He lurches back the way he came but he misjudges, or maybe the land is just playing tricks on him the way it loves to, because he steps right into more flowers. They waver in front of him like a mirage. Maybe they’re not even here, maybe he’s caught in some hungry thing’s illusion. Real or not, doesn't much matter; they can still kill him. He's fought and shredded and bled his way through Purgatory and he's gonna get done in by a field of flowers. Fucking great.

Dean’s on his hands and knees now. He's not really sure when that happened. The sky is getting darker and he hears trees rattling somewhere close by but all he can see are poppies. He didn't even like that stupid movie, just watched it because Sam did, and because at the end Dorothy goes back to Kansas and her family is alive. He tries to take shallow breaths, the way Dad taught them to breathe in a fire.

His eyes feel heavy and thick but Dean fights to keep them open. Sam will be pissed if he finds a way to pull Dean out of here and all he gets is a flower-smelling corpse—assuming no scavenger finds his body, assuming this field doesn’t just swallow him whole, tuck him into the ground to suck away his marrow and make those flowers even redder. But this is a damn sight better than some deaths he’s faced—he's not leaving anyone to have to fight without him, not letting anyone down, the only way a Winchester’s ever gonna die in their sleep. It would be so easy.

 _Help me,_ he thinks muzzily, and an open bloom brushes his cheek.

He retches. It clears his mind for a second, but not long enough to get out, just barely enough to crawl away from the flower that touched him. Dean lets his shaking arms collapse and curls up on the treacherously soft ground, tucking his nose into his jacket. It smells a little like whatever he just killed but still, inexorably, of poppies.

The sky has turned green and dangerous, the wind bending the heads of the poppies as it rushes over the field. Maybe a tornado will pluck him up and whirl him away and save him. But this is Dean Winchester's life, this is Purgatory, and if he can't save himself then nobody will because he has no one left. "Don't let me get killed by flowers," he mumbles at the sky, but as ever, it isn't listening.

His eyes slip closed. The scent presses him down like a physical thing, merciless and gentler than anything else he’s felt here. He feels a gust of wind rush over his body, just before he passes out, and it sounds like wings.


End file.
